March 2015 AdSense Earnings and Observations

[Mentat]

February had only 28 days, but for me was pretty good in the end, but I do not think it will last, because I see less traffic and clicks each day.

We had President Day, Valentines Day and Freezing temperatures in US.

Let's hope that March 2015 will be better; there are no major holidays.

[magician]

Witnessed delayed report red bar again on Tuesday. This is very frequent nowadays and whenever it happens my revenue is 20-25% lower than usual. Not sure, if Google's promise 'earnings will not be impacted' is actually true.

[RedBar]

Not sure, if Google's promise 'earnings will not be impacted' is actually true.

It's very rare I have a decent or even average day when the red bar has been displayed.

What did Tuesday bring me? Quite extraordinary metrics actually:

1. Desktop earned only 36.5% of total

2. Tablets' EPC 273.7% of desktop

3. Mobiles' EPC 221% of desktop

4. CTR of both Tablets and Mobiles 192.7% v desktop

Desktop seems to be the problem for me. I had a massive fall on 14th February and then again on 21st February. Since 25th February it has been nothing but downhill:

1. Not one day with average clicks

2. Only one day with average CTR

3. Only one day with average EPC

4. Not one day with average earnings

Does this mean that Google has fewer issues with Tablets and Mobiles?

I have no idea but it ain't half screwing-up my already meagre (UK spelling) earnings.

[RedBar]

Surely a red bar ought to be showing or is that also broken along with many other things?

After 25% of a Google day my UK and US visitors are only at 10% of their average, not according to my logs they aren't!

[netmeg]

The main question remains how do you detect "fake clicks" ?

You can't, but you can deep dive into your logfiles and look for patterns that might point you in a direction.

[avalon37]

After an incredible day yesterday, today is doing even better. What's working is rich media interest based ads. All of a sudden they are paying CPC prices I have never seen before. Not even in days like Black Friday or cyber Monday.

I wonder if it has anything to do with me removing all ads for the majority of February. I can't see how putting ads back on would spike CPC prices so much. Unless advertisers are placement targeting me.

[Mike343]

You can tell if they are in the reports under targeting types.

[RedBar]

An absolutely horrendous EPC for me today, clicks fine, CTR fine, simply an extremely low EPC from all major countries.

Surely that's not just from blocking 10 non-relevant advertisers yesterday?

[Mike343]

I wouldn't think so but seeing horrible EPC as well today.

[Mentat]

Low pageviews, so low, that I suspect an google upadate :(

[MrSavage]

Grinding to a halt.

[Mentat]

I believe that the problem is:
How Google Made It A Little Harder To Reach Google.com From Outside The US [searchengineland.com]

I see major drops on non-english speaking countries...

[RedBar]

Started removing AdSense from my sites which are easy to do, the older sites will take much longer however it's going to have to be done, they're taking the urine now!

[Mentat]

Today it's a disaster.
Lower payment each hour + less traffic?
Perfect storm

Great google, I've done it again!

[avalon37]

Sorry to hear about the continued decline for many of you. I had been trending down mysself, but the last 3 days have been off the charts. I have changed nothing, but here is where my performance has improved. Perhaps it will useful in some way to you.

Top level: both CTR and CPC way up. Best possible scenario. Even seeing one of the 2 key metrics improve has a big impact, but luckily for me both are up dramatically.

Devices:
Desktop is seeing the biggest improvement
Slight improvement on tablet
Not surprisingly, mobile is unchanged - still terrible

Ad Types:
Text ads are doing a bit better
Image ads are driving the majority of my performance increase
Rich Media - not much change

Type of Ads:
Interest based ads are up big time in terms of CTR and CPC. More than usual.
Contextual ads are up too - much less though.

For accounts struggling, you might want to make sure you have interest based ads turned on if you had paused them. And perhaps even try Display ads only - pause text ads for a day or two. I know text ads really do bump up the auction prices most of time, but it's worth a shot to pause text ads and seee. I say that because MOST of the improvement over the last few days have come from image ads. And I'm talking significant improvement the last few days.

[samwest]

Just curious...how many webmasters who use Adsense ALSO buy Adwords ads?

[RedBar]

I feel this is a total Google fubar.

Just how can I have my best day of the year on 25th February and then the entire thing comes crumbling down. At the time I wrote:

Whatever happened, I like it, however in 11 years I've never seen such "out of average" numbers.

And what's it done since then?

6 out of the 7 days all below average earnings at 66.3%

PVs are the same however clicks, therefore CTR, all down.

It's an unmitigated mess for some of us and I do not believe for one moment that twiddling with any dials or settings will have any discernible effect and it could actually worsen the situation IF, yeah, I know this is a really BIG IF, they manage to sort out the complete and utter debacle they have created.

[RedBar]

Absolutely awesome G, 1 x 15 cent click from the USA so far today, completely and utterly banjaxed!

[Mike343]

I am seeing a better CTR today, wondering if this is from changes I made or ads that actually make sense for my site...

[Mentat]

ADX reporting is down, dead...

[RedBar]

So now we know, the red bar is no longer deployed when their systems go belly-up!

For me Thursday ended with completely normal metrics across the board except for my EPC which was dragged down again by an awful US average at 62.1%.

Five full days into March and this lower EPC is manifesting itself in another way. Last month my desktop earnings were 60.5%, already this month it has dropped to 53.4% however it is very easy to see why because my average desktop EPC has dropped to 64%

Both tablets and mobiles have a higher EPC at 143.75% and 137.5% respectively therefore my question has to be why has my desktop EPC dropped so dramatically?

FWIW when I check I am seeing similar ads on all devices however I haven't a clue what is being shown in the US.

[Rasputin]

@redbar, sorry if its obvious to everyone else but when you keep quoting %, what are you comparing with what to get these % ?

[netmeg]

I think he's comparing with his previous stats.

[SEOPTI]

RedBar, try to shrink desktop screen size to mobile size maybe this will help ;)

[kireb]

This is by far the best week since I've joined the program. Unbelievable RPM for me, probably helped by a very cheap Euro. Most of my traffic is from outside the EU. Traffic is good and steady.

[RedBar]

@Rasputin

Last month

This is a a time of the year when traditionally everything goes up, not down.

try to shrink desktop screen size to mobile size maybe this will help ;)

Yay, the opposite of those annoying sites that automatically full screen a new browser window ... of course yesterday my mobile EPC suddenly dropped 50% but still ahead of desktop and combined tablet/mobile earnings at 43%.

I'm predicting about May/June time I'll be 50/50 ... I think netmeg's way ahead of that, anyone else?

[netmeg]

I dunno; i don't do percentages like you do. Got too much math in my life as it is.

[RedBar]

Hahaha...I've had so many years in business discussing numbers plus working with imperial and metric that it's all become automatic to me...should I start doing them in fractions?

[netmeg]

should I start doing them in fractions?

Now you're just making up words.

[RedBar]

Half the time I seem to be doing so but the other 50% tells me I'm not, maybe I've simply got a split personality?

[nubchai]

March has been very good for me so far. Pageviews. CTR and CPC are all uo. Almost normal.